


Members Only

by betweentheloins



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Drinking, HP: EWE, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Veela
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 11:14:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10097402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweentheloins/pseuds/betweentheloins
Summary: What if there was a place where you could completely be yourself, or anyone you wanted to be for that matter, and everyone there had to forget everything they previously knew about you? It sounds tempting—perfect, even. Right?





	

**Author's Note:**

> "All we are saying is give first person/present tense a chance." —The Beatles (probably)
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr: @whysotensepotter

**Rule No. 1:**

**A guest may be called only by the name they present another guest with, and no information about either guest shall be assumed unless said information has come out in The Club previously. Information a guest shares can be as untrue as they choose, although it must always be taken as truth by other guests.**

 

The moment that I walk into The Club, a sense of ease comes over me. It’s as though I can feel all of the shackles that tether me to who I am falling to the ground around me, clattering heavily against the glazed concrete. The lights are low, the music is just loud enough to drown out my thoughts if I let it—but it isn’t blaring. No, I can have a conversation when I need to.

 

It’s been months since I’ve been in. I didn’t really know what to expect when I came back—I amped myself up so much that I almost didn’t make it out of my front door. But now I’m taking a seat at the bar and ordering a manhattan, thankful that my regular spot is open. It’s early enough in the night. I’m enjoying the ambiance, and my drink is smooth—the last bartender was a little heavy handed. For a while I’d switched to Old Fashioneds and used the melting ice as a crutch, since I’m a slow sipper. But this manhattan… It’s cauterizing all the right wounds in all the right ways.

 

Even though The Rules say that public anonymity is key in The Club, I’ll be the first to admit that my face is too well known for most people to look past what that means and approach me anyway. I’ve had a few takers, and I’ve taken a few home—which I admit can be quite messy, considering the information sharing restraints—but mostly they’re all just in it for the satisfaction of being with _me._ I got past that a long time ago, and I’ve learned a few tricks as well.

 

Since it’s been a few months, I’m noticing that there are quite a few newcomers. Generally there’s a steady turnover rate, but The Club has also gained popularity since its ad in _The Prophet_. The room begins to steadily fill up quicker than I’ve ever seen before, and I’m feeling more and more claustrophobic as the minutes pass.

 

I flag down the bartender. “Hold this for me, will you? I need to step outside.”

 

He pulls my drink to the side. “Yeah, I’ve got you,” he says, and then I’m shuffling through the crowds.

 

Once I’m outside, I lean against the rough brick of the building and take some deep breaths, relishing the frigid chill of the air on my face. I’m calming down with each rise and fall of my chest, and I remind myself why I’m here tonight.

 

The Club has the best results in the city, and as much as I deny to my friends that I’m not lonely… I am. My last relationship went down in flames. I need this. I need something to stick for once. I’m tired of spending every last night in an empty bed.

 

So I square myself up, go back inside, and retrieve a timer from the basket at the end of the bar and my drink from the bartender.

 

“You know,” he says as he’s handing it back to me, “you might have better luck in The Lounge. The lease next door ran out and the owner here bought it out—we finished refurbishing it last week. It’s much… quieter.” I smile. Bartenders never miss a beat. The best ones can read their clientele like an open book, and this one is no different.

 

“I’ll be back for another manhattan in about a half an hour,” I tell him, sliding him a few sickles. He then introduces me to yet another new trick of The Club’s, manufactured to keep the conversation rolling without stopping for bar runs—and to make sure tabs are paid.

 

“Manhattans all night?” He asks. I confirm, and he taps my timer a few times with his wand, then demonstrates how tapping the side in the same manner automatically orders and sends drinks out to you wherever you are in The Club. It directly charges your account so that when your membership bill comes due every month, you can pay your tab at the same time.

 

I have to admit, I’m impressed as hell with the improvements that The Club has made, and as I’m walking away I’m already mentally penning a congratulatory note to the owners.

 

I make my way down a narrow hallway and up a set of stairs into what is apparently the “The Lounge” and I’m relieved at how much less crowded it is. The ambiance in the room is a little different—quieter, definitely, but also more like a lodge than a dance club. The music is lower—something more instrumental with less bass, a little more jazzy—and the rough stone walls give the impression that I’ve just walked into a small holiday lodge. I notice a set of robust armchairs facing one wall, where a fire roars in its hearth. So I make myself comfortable against the worn leather. I pull out a book, set my timer on the rough wooden tabletop in front of me, and settle in to wait for someone—anyone—to approach me.

 

It’s been about an hour, and like usual I’m thoroughly engrossed in my book, simply because no one has bothered to distract me. My manhattan is drained and I haven’t had the focus to order another one yet, when I’m approached by someone—literally the last person I would have ever expected. I wait for the familiar feeling of hostility, but somehow I find myself overcome by his charm. There’s something different about him… and about me. I almost don’t recognize him.

 

“Can I buy you another drink, er—?” a voice from my past says.

 

It takes everything in me to keep my eyes from falling out of my skull—so I allow myself exactly two seconds of gawking before I cooly say, “Malcolm.”

 

***

 

**Rule No. 2:**

**A guest may engage another guest with the guarantee of seven minutes once and only once; the timer shall immediately be set for seven minutes, during which time each guest is beholden to the other. Once the timer releases the guests, they may choose to voluntarily continue the conversation or move on. Guests shall not interrupt the conversation of another set of guests for any reason. A guest is not obligated to fulfill this obligation if they have intentions of leaving The Club when they are initially approached, and the guest may take a rain check.**

 

“Malcolm,” he repeats. He takes a seat in the twin to mine, easing back into the leather as though he’s always belonged in that very armchair, and I set down my book.

 

If there’s one thing The Club has taught me, it’s how to disengage from preconceived notions—so the feeling is real and true when I admire how good he looks from this angle, the light from the flames carving out all of his features, which have hardened over the years. He looks like he’s been chiselled from stone, but his light eyes remain soft and playful. That’s when I realize that he’s been sitting there for a full minute while I’ve been appreciating him like a fine work of art.

 

He smiles, seemingly shameless and perfectly at ease to allow my gaze all night. He smoothly breaks my gaze and reaches for my timer—taking my silence as permission, not that I could turn him down anyway—to order my next drink.

 

“Orders are wand-specific, if you’re wondering,” he says, explaining that I didn’t just order myself a drink from my own timer. Then he slides back the wooden catch on the top, and the minutes start counting down. We’re at seven.

 

“So, I haven’t seen you around here before,” he slips in casually, but I can tell he thinks I’m new.

 

II can’t help but feel my lips turn up in amusement. “I took a break for a bit, but I’ve been around since this place opened. We’re… old nemeses.” I’m talking about The Club and I, of course.

 

Movement catches my attention out of the corner of my eye and I vaguely notice that my glass has refilled itself. Without asking, he reaches forward and takes a sip, daring me to protest with his eyes, and I find that I can’t. His lips are on my glass—my head is spinning.

 

“That’s sweeter than I anticipated,” he says in a low voice as he sets the drink down, and once again meets my gaze. “Not what I was expecting.”

 

“Nothing ever is,” I tell him. “You still haven’t told me your name.”

 

Six minutes.

 

“James,” he says, taking out his own timer and giving it a tap. “So Malcolm, what do you do for work?”

 

Unlike me, he currently has no drink. I’m wondering how his order will be fulfilled when he catches me off guard with this very simple question, to which I have a very simple answer, but for a moment I can’t remember it. “I work in dark artifacts,” I tell him honestly once I get a grip. I wait for him to break character, but he doesn’t bat an eye; apparently The Club has done things for his prejudice, as well. I go on, “I run a small business, discovering and dismantling items affected by dark magic.”

 

He seems genuinely interested, and his drink has gently floated up behind him, waiting for him to notice it. He does, and he reaches out to it for a long sip of a deep amber beer. “That seems useful. I’ve got an entire house filled with items like that, and I’ve no idea what to do with them.”

 

“Remind me to give you a card,” I reply smoothly. “And what do you do, James?”  


He slowly bites at his top lip, relieving it of the foam from his drink. A buzzing has begun in the back of my head. “I’m in between jobs right now, but I do a little freelancing on the side—personal projects, that sort of thing. I recently left the Auror program due to an injury, and now I’m considering a teaching position. I haven’t really made any decisions yet, but I’ve got time.”

 

Five minutes.

 

“What type of teaching position?”

 

I reach for my drink and take a sip, noticing when I put it down that despite how small of a drink he took, somehow my drink is already half gone. The burn in my chest offers up an explanation—I’m no slow sipper tonight.

 

“Something Defense related, I’m sure. I’ve been offered a position at The Ministry and at Hogwarts, plus another couple of offers from other European schools.”

 

“You’re quite the hot commodity then.”

 

He smiles a little half smile that’s almost a smirk, and the burn in my chest spreads further. “In some circles, yes.”

 

“And what about this circle?” I breathe.

 

He takes his time answering, first taking a swig of his beer, which is also quickly diminishing despite its size. He looks so relaxed leaning back in the chair, both arms resting on the armrests, his left hand cradling his beer which is resting on his knee. He chooses his words carefully. “I have found that popularity often blinds others to the truth.”

 

That kind of answer wouldn’t make much sense to most people, but I’m not most people. Those who want him see him as a collector’s item, someone to be coveted. And those who do see through him don’t like the truth when they compare it to who they thought he was. It sounds too familiar.

 

“That’s not to say that I don’t take advantage when I have a taste for it,” he alluringly admits before I can respond. My heart thumps.

 

Four minutes.

 

I uncross and recross my legs, trying to get comfortable again.

 

“Tell me about your business, Malcolm.”

 

My hand twitches for my drink, but I want to make it last and I’m afraid I’ll drain it in one go, so instead I smooth the fabric on my right thigh and pick a piece of invisible lint from my sleeve. “Clients hire me to enter their residences, go through their private collections, and pick out anything that could be harmful. Then I take said items back to my shop, restore them to their natural working order if possible, and return it to the client. Otherwise the item is deemed unsafe and slated for disposal.”

 

Three minutes.

 

He furrows his brow a bit. “That seems like something The Ministry should be doing.”

 

I look him over for a moment and lean forward. He mimics me, and I mutter in his ear, “Truthfully, I do work for The Ministry. The community that I cater to trusts one of their own more than they trust The Ministry itself, but the job needs doing regardless of who they think is doing it. So all of my practices are Ministry approved and overseen.” Being this close to him is not doing good things for my blood pressure.

 

He leans away, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “Isn’t that dishonest, Malcolm?”

 

“Is honesty more important than safety, James?” I say, finding it hard to use the name he’s chosen. But it fits him.

 

He pauses, considering. “No, I guess not.” I breathe a tiny sigh of relief, knowing that my secret is safe on these premises and that he has no inclination to share.

 

Two minutes.

 

I polish off my drink, deciding that I would rather have the alcohol in me than sitting uselessly on the table.

 

“So, what kind of injury?” I ask him, trying to steer the conversation away from myself, although I’ve interrupted some deep thought he was having. He recovers quickly, setting back into this suave stranger that I feel like I’m meeting for the first time which, for all intents and purposes, I am.

 

He grins and stands abruptly, his poorly scorgified sneakers hitting the floor, and I’m lucky that my drink isn’t still full and in my hand when he tugs up his t shirt, showing off a long, thick, puckered scar running from somewhere below his waistline, up the right side of his abdomen, and ending just to the side of his peck. Like his face, every bit of his skin that I take in is perfectly chiseled from stone, each muscle flexes and contracts with each full-belly breath that he takes, and I wonder just how far down the scar extends.

 

Before I know it, I’m standing and I have my hand on his waist, my thumb itching to caress the scar, wondering how I got there. The only thing I can think is how extraordinarily beautiful he is—it overwhelms each of my senses. My brain has questions. My body cares not.

 

One minute.

 

I’m staring, and now that he’s back in his element his gaze is burning a hole through me. I had no idea what I was asking when I mentioned the injury. I can’t take it back now. I don’t want to. And I can tell he can see the flames flickering in my eyes, only accentuating how immediate my need is. I swear he can hear every heartbeat.

 

Everything is in slow motion. His knuckles are relaxing, the fabric of his crumpled shirt is falling, and he’s taking a step towards me. My breath hitches, stuck in my throat, and it strikes me that even though we’re in The Club, we are still very much ourselves. Everyone around us, even though we’ve all been instructed to hold back judgement, knows who we are and what’s happening. His shirt hem has finally dropped down to his waist, concealing that scar—

 

And then the timer chimes, my daze breaks, and I bolt.

 

***

 

**Rule No. 3:**

**What happens at The Club stays at The Club. When referring to The Club outside of its doors, one may never directly reference the true identities of the guests that met there.**

 

I shoot up in bed, prematurely awake yet again—the dreams are getting to me. Against my better judgement, because getting my arse out of this bed will mean no hope of getting back to sleep, I swing to the floor and make my way to the fireplace, checking around it for the telltale signs of a head popping through in the middle of the night, searching for me.

 

No, there are no ashes or crumbling cinders anywhere near the hearth.

 

So next I make my nightly rounds for the fifth time this week, checking and double checking all of my windows, to make sure that no owls have been trying to break in.

 

There’s nothing. And where I see nothing, I see everything.

 

No one has tried to contact me. Which means there have been no reports of Saturday, no rumors. I breathe a little easier, knowing I’m safe from the tabloids for another day—Club Rules have miraculously been followed.

 

I try to tell myself that it was all an insane mistake—that The Club has truly jaded me into being much too open with those who I should remain closed off to. But the annoying part of my brain reminds me: isn’t that the point? If nothing else, doesn’t that mean that the many compiled months of my attendance at The Club have been working to grind down my prejudice? That there is hope for wizardkind everywhere—even for people like me?

 

I think back to that night, how what started as almost a joke became very serious very quickly. Truthfully even if I _had_ ever thought I would run into him at The Club, I would never have expected him to approach me, let alone take a true interest in me. I somehow never imagined finding him there, but if I _had_ , I would have thought that he would “follow The Rules” by keeping me there uncomfortably under his thumb, with loaded questions meant to reveal my true nature. Even though I’ve seen those same changes in myself, old habits die hard, right?

 

But that was before the other night. The moment he asked me if he could buy me a drink and I knew what was happening, I was in trouble. I was just mistaken as to how.

 

I make my way back to bed, my bare feet padding along the pristine wood floor, and wonder for the millionth time why the fuck I still live on this godforsaken property.

 

Honestly, I hate it. My parents left for France years ago to take up residence at our summer property, leaving me both physically and financially in charge of my childhood home.

 

It is tarnished by so, so many memories. In fact, I boarded up the main house when they left, and I’ve lived in the servants’ house ever since. Is it fancy? No, certainly not. But blood has never touched these walls, and that’s the only reason I get the little sleep that I do.

 

I lay back down between the satiny sheets, flex my toes, and stare up at the ceiling. I don’t expect sleep to take me before the morning, but the next thing I know I’m waking up and the sun has risen, the cool mist of dawn evaporating away.

 

I meander around the house all day, painfully aware that it is Saturday. I hate the weekends—it’s part of the reason I joined The Club so many months ago. There’s no work to keep me busy, and I have very few local friends to keep me company. That’s why it almost doesn’t surprise me when I’m impulsively showering at 5pm, styling my hair, and picking out my sharpest casual outfit… and by the time 7pm rolls around, I’m standing outside of The Club again.

 

“Draco,” a deep voice addresses me after some time.

 

I turn around. “Blaise,” I greet him as he walks over, arm in arm with his partner—- and by “partner”, I mean both at work _and_ at home.

 

It’s never made all that much sense to me, but Blaise and Luna work well together somehow. I’ve never questioned it—who am I to judge when he at least has someone?

 

“Hello, Draco,” Luna smiles dreamily, then kisses Blaise tenderly on the cheek. “I’ll just be inside—we have some contracts to go over when you’re done with your friend.”

 

From most people, I would take her statement of “your friend” as a clear distinction that I am not her friend, only Blaise’s, but I know she doesn’t mean it that way. She may be a little… off the wall, but she has always meant well. When she refers to me as Blaise’s friend, what she really means is that she took note of who I was for all of about two seconds, and then her mind fluttered to other things. I admire that about her. She’s got her priorities straight.

 

Blaise offers her no answer, and she doesn’t need one, as she’s already turned and left the conversation. “So, you’ve finally made it back to my Club?”

 

I smirk. “I was here last Saturday too, you arse—or haven’t you checked the Guest Book?”

 

“Been preoccupied, mate,” he grins for the first time tonight. He’s looking back at the well-hidden door that Luna slipped through—the entrance to their private residence above The Club—as though his eyes could follow her through the brick.

 

“So there haven’t been any… rumors?” I ask, getting straight to the point now that I’ve gotten lucky enough to run into him.

 

His eyebrows raise cautiously. “What kind of rumors?”

 

“Well—Club rumors.”

 

“Damn it Draco, not this again. You know The Rules. I can’t discuss it, and neither can you, unless you have a formal complaint and are coming to me as a Club Member.”

 

“If I can’t bypass The Rules with the _owner_ of this fine establishment, then what is even the point of our friendship?” I grumble snarkily, and turn towards the main entrance.

 

He sighs heavily. “Fine. I can tell you that there haven’t been reports of anything I would find out of sorts,” he admits, stopping me in my tracks. “Although, I wouldn’t know what I was looking for, would I?”

 

I scoff. “Oh no, you would know. You would definitely know.”

 

He starts to get a little tense. “That bad?”

 

I shrug, my blazer rustling with the movement. “If you haven’t heard anything, then no. But you know my fears.”

 

“Draco, I’ve told you, there’s no way that anyone could or would—”

 

“You know that’s not true, Blaise. Things have very nearly gotten out in the past when tongues have wagged.”

 

“And I have a safeguard in place now as a result. I’m telling you mate, nothing is getting out. Having Luna around has been helpful—she has some good contacts and some even better ideas. I promise, The Club is safer than it’s ever been. There are real consequences to breaking that particular Rule now—and I’ll tell you, it’s not pretty. Have you ever seen someone with a face covered in cursed pustules?”

 

I cringe at the thought, but I can tell he’s being sincere. I can also see that he’s itching to get back inside, but he stops twitching for a moment and notices me seemingly for the first time tonight. He narrows his eyes in my direction.

 

“Exactly how long have you been standing out here?”

 

I gaze down at the pavement, rolling a loose piece of gravel under my shoe. “Maybe twenty minutes?”

 

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re good man, just go inside—live your life. I’ll let you know if anything comes through about you, but I guarantee it won’t.”

 

I concede. Trying to pry information out of the Club’s owner has never worked for me before—somehow Blaise has developed a sense of loyalty to the guests, which I suppose is good if you’re not self-serving like I am. “Goodnight, Blaise. Enjoy your evening.”

 

He grins a little too wide, once again eager to ditch me and head straight to his private quarters. “Good luck.”

 

So I take a deep breath, and I step into The Club once more.

 

***

 

For some reason, tonight The Club is much more empty than it was last Saturday. When I make this comment to the bartender—Angelo, he tells me his name is—he informs me that last weekend was a promotional weekend for a new drink menu they introduced, something that I completely failed to notice, not that I would have cared either way. I happily take my manhattan and sit at a table in the corner of the main room, bypassing The Lounge completely.

 

I’m starting to think my luck has turned around when almost immediately I’m approached by someone, giving me no time at all to take my book out… But luck is not on my side.

 

Up until this point, I really haven’t had a preference regarding whether or not I want to see him again, and when his face comes into my view, my mind and body are wrestling over control of that opinion. I can only wonder what my face looks like, since he looks highly amused.

 

“Malcolm,” he greets me breezily, taking a seat in the faux leather bar stool at my high rise table. He rests his bare, muscled forearms on the tabletop. My mother would have a fit. It’s sexy in a way I don’t want to admit, and immediately my guard is up—way up.

 

“I haven’t invited you to sit,” I frown at him. Where did he even come from anyway?

 

His face drops a little, clearly somehow not expecting me to turn him down.

 

“What, you honestly thought that after last weekend I would want to continue the conversation?” I hint.

 

“”Well—I—I just think that seven minutes isn’t a very long time to get to know someone.” His smooth facade slipping for a moment.

 

I sigh. Other than the occasional spats at school, I really never had the opportunity to speak with him privately and without malice—therefore never had the opportunity to experience how very thick he can apparently be. “I wasn’t actually referencing the _conversation._ More how it _ended_ ,” I hint more directly.

 

“Oh—that. Listen, I can explain.”

 

“Who says I want you to?” I grunt, keeping my eyes on my hands that are woven around my glass.

 

“It’s a good story,” he says, not at all convincingly. The lights from the dance floor on the other side of the room are flashing and moving with the beat of the music that’s playing—when you’re close enough, you can feel the bass in your chest, but my table isn’t in that zone.

 

Another heavy sigh escapes my lips, and I weigh the options. With him sitting here, it’s unlikely that anyone else will approach me tonight, which is the entire reason why I came. Right? I should send him away… Right?

 

Against my better judgement, I say, “Okay, fine. Tell me a story, Jamie.”

 

He raises his eyebrows. “It’s James.”

 

“You shouldn’t have picked a name with a nickname you didn’t like.”

 

“Damn it—whatever. My injury? My scar? It’s pretty unique.”

 

Just the thought of it has my chest tightening a bit, remembering the heat where I stroked it with my thumb…

 

“It’s a Veela scar.”

 

I was not at all expecting that. “What?” I look at him full on—a mistake. His stupid tousled hair is looking extra good tonight.

 

“I was working a case last year when my partner and I got separated, and I was attacked by a rogue Veela clan. My partner took them down—well, all but one, but that’s neither here nor there—but the damage had already been done. I don’t know if you caught it in _The Prophet_ , but they almost killed him that night and they left me with this scar—he’s still in St. Mungo’s… But anyway, most people don’t realize that Veela properties transfer, sort of like Vampires. But unlike Vampires, you can’t actually _become_ a Veela—they’re born, not made.”

 

“You’re a bloody Veela?”

 

“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. _I’m_ not—my scar is.”

 

“You’re telling me that that scar is what made me—”

 

And then he kind of smirks this conniving grin. “I like to see what it can do.”

 

I breathe sigh of relief and then hope against hope that my hunch is right. “So, when the scar is covered up…”

 

“It has no affect on people,” he says. Damn it. Damn it to hell.

 

“Keep it covered then,” I glower at him, annoyed that what I felt for him before the moment he lifted his shirt was—as much as I don’t want to admit it—genuine attraction, the same as it is now. He just continues to grin stupidly. My guard stays up, especially regarding that scar, now knowing what it does. Not wanting to make a fool of myself, cold is the way to go, even if what I’m feeling on the inside is anything but.

 

“So, do anything fun this week?” He’s fully relaxed in his seat, the tall beer he brought with him dripping condensation all over the table top—because he is apparently a heathen who has never been taught the use of a coaster.

 

“You’re still here?” I grumble, my heart not all in it.

 

He frowns. “Come on, my shirt’s down. You don’t really want me to go away, do you?”

 

Another sigh. “If you must know, I worked. A lot. That’s what I do.”

 

“That’s no fun,” he frowns, taking a long sip of beer and glancing at the bar.

 

“I’m aware.” Remembering suddenly that I have my own drink, I down it in one go. When he looks back, his eyes settle on the empty glass. He says nothing, simply ordering another drink for me.  

 

I get the feeling that it’s going to be a long night.

 

***

 

It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen him—not, to my embarrassment, for lack of trying. I showed up last Saturday with the mindset of telling him we couldn’t see each other anymore, because after all I do pay Club fees and he is destroying my chances of meeting someone as he commandeers my time with his jabbering. However, he didn’t show up, and instead of being relieved, I was annoyed. And after about an hour, I became worried.

 

I thought about it all this week, especially through my work hours because they can be so solitary. A pocket watch I was testing out had burned a hole through my pocket and damn near through my thigh before the pain hit and I could focus enough to destroy it. I spent a little too much time having to patch myself up.

 

That client will be getting a decent bill.

 

So I’m back at The Club, sitting in The Lounge at the quiet little table, when he actually shows up. He looks a little worse for wear but still in one piece, and immediately I’m bothered that he’s even come. I almost got lucky last weekend—I could have sealed the deal today.

 

But he’s here and even though physically he seems to be in one piece, there’s something different about him.

 

“Alright, Jamie?”

 

“Not today, Malcolm,” he tells me as he settles into his seat and sighs. He pulls out his timer and taps his timer the double amount of times that is needed for one drink, and momentarily two full beers float up behind him. He wastes no time at all in polishing of one, and then the other, and almost immediately orders another.

 

“Would you like mine as well?” I ask, offering him my manhattan. He considers for a moment and actually takes me up on my offer, which I wasn’t entirely serious about, but I don’t feel as pissed when he drains it, sets it down on the table, and says to me:

 

“My partner died.”

 

It takes me a moment to realize that he’s talking about his auror partner and not a romantic partner, which we’ve already established that he does not have, and it’s not hard to have sympathy for him with the way he looks.

 

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, never good with words for situations like this. “What happened?”

 

“His injuries from the incident got the best of him, he never healed. I spent all last weekend at the hospital with him and his wife, and then all week helping her plan the funeral. That was today.”

 

I nod, and uncharacteristically place my hand on his knee as a means of consolement. I pat it twice. “I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

 

So I leave, visit Angelo, and return with two shots of firewhiskey and a large basket of piping hot chips.

 

I hand one of the petite glasses to him and set the chips on the table, then take a seat.

 

“To your partner,” I say, holding my shot up to him.

 

It takes him a moment to realize what I’ve done, and then he toasts with me. “To Matty,” he says, and we drink.

 

“Thanks,” he smiles grimly. “But what are the chips for?”

 

“Well,” I tell him, “you’re distraught and I’m hungry. These seemed like a good compromise.”

 

He genuinely smiles even though he’s probably on the verge of a breakdown, takes a chip, and spends the evening telling me about his partner.

 

I don’t at all mind.

 

***

 

No matter what time I seem to arrive at The Club each Saturday, from then on he is always there first. And even though I would have done the exact opposite four weeks ago, I am the one to approach him. The table in The Lounge has somewhat become “our” table, and that’s where always end up now. I’m not complaining—the flames do exquisite things to his features, and he is a sight for sore eyes.

 

I think about our past together, and about how when I met him for the first time outside of these doors, I didn’t actually know who he was. I only learned his identity on our first day of school, and he—rightfully so—turned me away then. My arrogant little heart couldn’t take the rejection, and I made him my enemy instead.

 

But I always knew, when I looked at him, that he was unavoidable in an opposites-attract sort of way. We were rivals, but we were obsessed. A better word for it would have been “captivated”, but what’s an eleven year old boy to know about romantic feelings?

 

Each and every time I see him, the urge to grab him by the waist again like I did on the first night increases. I find that even though I was conditioned to consider him to be the brainless, arrogant twat that I’ve always thought he was, he’s actually intelligent… Well, in the subjects he cares about. He can, and does, talk my ear off excitedly about his work as an auror and how much he’s enjoyed teaching in the past. I learn about his friends, and his fierce love for his chosen family, and I begin to understand the more pleasant characteristics of someone so… open. I’m not sure he knows how to turn his emotions off. I’m not sure I want him to.

 

And as for the arrogance… No, he’s definitely arrogant, but in a way that’s also charming. I get the feeling that his family treated him poorly, which guts me, but I also sort of admire that in a sick, twisted sort of way. Because of his neglect, he was brought up with no expectations for himself—so he made his own. He’s arrogant because he’s confident—because he’s _chosen_ who he wants to be, not because he’s constantly second guessing each and every bit of himself because he’s not himself at all.

 

It’s all thanks to The Club really. Without it, I never would have put down my pride and let this sort of thing come about. But it’s going well, we’re forming a friendship… And I don’t think he has any idea how badly I want him. At this point I can admit it to myself—I’m really struggling here.

 

I also know that the point of The Club is to meet potential partners, but I’m still struggling with the idea that we can even be friends outside of these doors. I still watch for news articles about us, but nothing has come up yet. And with every passing day, I crave my Saturday evenings with him more and more. I wonder if he’ll ever feel the same way.

 

I wonder if I’ll ever have the guts to tell him.

 

***

 

We’re about six weeks into our regular Saturday meetings—when he asks his regular question:

 

“So what’s new?”

 

I never have anything more exciting to say than “nothing”, or “not much”, so after a week of frustration on the subject and much deliberating, I decide to admit to him the thing that’s been bothering me the most lately.

 

“I have been thinking about trying to… change my current housing situation.”

 

“And what situation is that?” He seems genuinely interested, like somehow he doesn’t know that I still live on Manor property. So I tell him how I’m still living in my childhood home where so many bad things happened, albeit I’ve allowed myself the freedom of moving out of the main house. I don’t have to give him details—despite The Rules and The Club, he obviously knows who I am. He knows where I live. He can interpret.

 

I can tell what I’ve said has finally stirred something in him, and I can tell that it makes him a little uncomfortable. I’m thinking it’s for selfish reasons—he’s got his own ghosts, I imagine, but then he’s talking and I haven’t taken in a word of it.

 

“What?” I mutter smartly.

 

“I said that it must be terrible for you to be stuck living in that place.”

 

His answer surprises me, as he often does. “You don’t think it’s horrible and cruel for me to still be living there?”

 

“No, I can see why you would stay. I mean, no one would want to buy it, right? What else are you supposed to do?”

 

Damn him for understanding, and damn him for being so atractive. He’s the first person to understand without an explanation. Him of all people. Why?

 

“Most people do actually think it’s horrible and cruel for me to continue living there. It doesn’t occur to them that I have very few options.”

 

He pauses for a long sip of beer, and doesn't pick right back up speaking when he’s done. He’s lost in thought—and then he’s reaching down towards his shirt hem.

 

I’ve all but fallen out of my seat, scrambling to get up before a repeat of our first Saturday happens, when he places a hand on mine where I’ve braced myself against the arm of my chair. I yank mine out from under his, startled, but it has the desired effect.

 

“Calm down,” he says, “I told you, the shirt will stay on. I’m going for my pocket, you wuss.”

 

“Piss off,” I tell him as I’m sitting back down, wary.

 

He’s holding something small in his hand.

 

“What if I had an idea? An idea that could help you… But it could break The Rules and really screw me over if not done properly.”

 

I raise my eyebrows at him. “I’m listening.”

 

“There’s a fund set up by The Ministry… sort of like a beautification fund for areas that have been affected by… certain events.”

 

“Okay,” I tell him, picking at the edge of my glass with my thumb nail, “go on.”

 

“The Ministry is buying up properties and turning them into good things—parks, memorials, museums, regular commercial buildings—whatever’s good for that area. They’re going for a fresh start, trying to help people rebuild the destruction and destroying what needs rebuilding for people who are stuck in miserable situations like yours.”

 

“You’re saying… my house could potentially become a coffee shop? Or an entire shopping center?”

 

“That’s always a possibility, but outside of The Club I have a certain amount of influence with that committee specifically, which is why I need you to be very cautious when you approach them. I’m going to give you instructions, do you need to write them down?”

 

“No, I’ve got a pretty good memory,” I say, trying not to be offended, although I can understand his paranoia.

 

“Okay. You’re going to take this card,” he says, sliding the item in his hand across the table. It looks like a plain, blank business card, and I wonder if he’s pulling my leg but I keep listening anyway. I take the card, and he continues. “Go to the address on the back and ask for Stan. Tell Stan that you’d like to apply for the Revite Project, and give him that card. Don’t tell him anything about who sent you. Stan will understand, and won’t ask questions. And with that card, you’ll get a little more leeway with what happens to your property than anyone coming in off the street would.”

 

I turn the card over, and sure enough there’s an address printed in tiny scrawl on the back… and there’s a lightning bolt drawn sloppily in smeared green ink next to the address. I try not to laugh, and I’m successful when I realize what this means.

 

“So some person named Stan is going to buy my house and turn it into whatever I want it to be?”

 

He snickers. “You’re not going to be as in control as you’re making it sound, but yes, that is the bottom line.”

 

“When should I go?”

 

“Stan keeps normal business hours: Monday through Friday, nine to five. Just pop in anytime in the coming week, or whenever you’re ready.”

 

I’ve been so wrapped up in the possibility of getting out of my housing mess that I haven’t really even looked at him properly all night. I’m thankful, whether I want to let him know that or not, and I glance up to look him in the face when I notice—“You’re not wearing your…” and then I stop myself. Because I’m about to out him, and me, and I can’t believe I haven’t noticed all this time. “Sorry, I mean… You have green eyes, and I imagine they would be more difficult to see if you were to wear glasses.”

 

He doesn’t seem at all offended or mad that I almost lost control of my tongue, and instead he just seems… gentle. That’s the only way I can describe his face—gentle.

 

“That’s true, and normally I do wear glasses so it can be harder for people to see my eyes,” he says, going along with my idiotic coverup. “But I’ve also noticed that my glasses give me a certain… recognizability, if you will, and I prefer not to wear them here at The Club if I want any chance of people taking me seriously.”

 

His eyes really are quite beautiful, and now I need another drink, but I never grabbed a timer—apparently I didn’t feel the need… but then again, apparently neither did he.

 

“Drink run—what do you want?” I ask him, trying not to think about what it might mean that neither of us bothered with timers tonight.

 

He chugs his beer, his cheeks full of alcohol like some sort of lush chipmunk, and hands me his glass. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

 

“A manhattan?”

 

“Is that what you’re having?”

 

“Generally, yes.”

 

“Then that’s what I want.”

 

So I get us both manhattans, and we talk into the night.

 

***

 

**Amendment No. 1:**

**Guests who wish to continue exploring** **_other possibilities_ ** **with another guest may reserve a room above The Lounge either in advance or on-site, depending on availability.**

 

On Monday morning, I half expect myself to be anxious and unwilling to go see this Stan character, but I’m more excited than anything. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, to keep up the bitter Malfoy facade because I truly can’t think of a reason that anyone would want to help _me_ , but I’m nearly bounding out of my door at 8:55am.

 

I’ve never particularly liked apparating—no one can really explain the mechanics of it, so everyone just has to believe it works and it will. It does work for me every time, without fail. But there’s a little part of the back of my mind that thinks it won’t work, and then at the last second I always panic because if _I_ think it won’t work, then it really won’t work and I’ll probably end up splinched somewhere.

 

But at 9am I’m in one piece, and I’m knocking at the door that matches the address on the card. Eventually a tiny, stout man with a very lumpy nose and a tuft of bright ginger hair answers the door.

 

“Yeah?” he says. He’s got a funny accent, and I realize that he’s American. How strange.

 

“I’m here to see Stan,” I tell him, careful not to let any Club information slip, as instructed. “I’d like to apply for the Revite Project.”

 

He looks me up and down with his beady little eyes, and holds out his hand. I give him the card and he inspects it thoroughly—looking at each bit, bending the card stock, and, finally, giving it a good sniff. I’m praying the alarm doesn’t show on my face, but he has stopped looking at me. In fact, he’s completely walking—well, more waddling—away, and I’m unsure of what to do. Leave? Follow?

 

“Are you comin’ or what?” he says, and I peg him as a New Yorker—or somewhere in that area. I close the door behind me and scurry after him through a dimly lit hallway and into an office-type room, although it’s literally an empty room save for a desk and two chairs. Oh, and a dying plant in the corner with a stray Christmas bauble attached to one of the sagging yellow leaves.

 

“So whaddaya want?”

 

“I’d like to give up my home, and I think it would make a nice memorial park,” I tell him. “The grounds have some really spectacular gardens, although they need tending, and you could tear down the house, put in a gazebo or two, maybe The Ministry could host garden parties for major donors—”

 

“No,” Stan tells me immediately.

 

I’m really taken off guard, having spent at least ten minutes last night preparing this speech. “What? I was told that I would have a certain amount of input—”

 

“You would—but your idea is stupid. So here’s what we’ll do.”

 

I have already begun to question what race Stan is—wizard? Goblin? Possibly some sort of deformed house elf? But he pulls out a real wand—albeit stumpy, much like him—and begins flicking it around. At some point he abandons the wand in the air and it continues to flick without his dictation, bringing in rolls of paper from, I assume, all throughout the house.

 

“A public library memorial,” he says gruffly. “We can keep your garden idea—that’s good—but that’s a perfectly good mansion that you’re trying to throw away here and I won’t do it.”

 

The papers he’s summoned in are actual blueprints of The Manor—how he knows exactly who I am, I have no idea—and his wand is busily moving lines around on the pages, pulling in a wall here, pushing out a boundary there, deleting entire rooms and then re-adding them in almost the exact same design but with something small adjusted each time. He even somehow knows about the secret passages and safe rooms that my family had added back during the first war—some that even I didn’t know about. When his wand stops flicking, I’m amazed. I can tell that it’s The Manor, but everything has been changed: the gates, the pillars, the very innards of the house. And for the first time since my home was overtaken by Death Eaters, I can look at the design and not cringe. It’s not my house anymore, and it has never looked better.

 

I’m having a hard time with words, and Stan seems the type to be uncomfortable with emotion, so he’s uselessly ruffling with the papers until I get myself together. “When can we get started?” I eventually pipe.

 

“I can start construction today and have it done in—eh—let’s say a month.”

 

I’m shocked. “That quickly?”

 

“The Project isn’t here to dawdle—that just causes delays and hikes up prices. No, we start today.”

 

“Okay, I’ll need to clear out the main house—”

 

“We can take care of that, put everything in your vault for you to go through later.”

 

“Oh. Well, I guess I’ll need to take a trip to Gringotts and apply for a loan—”

 

“No need,” Stan says, and he pulls out heavy ledger book.

 

Stan isn’t one to waste time or resources, so after we haggle on an amount that he’s willing to give me for The Manor and that’s all settled, then comes the house hunting.

 

He’s willing to let me have about two weeks to stay in the servants’ cottage while they reconstruct The Manor, but I’ve been ready for some time now to be out of there and I choose instead to go with him to see a few listings that very day. Hoping I won’t have buyer’s remorse but pretty sure that I’ll be happy with anything that isn’t The Manor, I sign on the dotted line before dinner and Stan has my stuff sent over from the cottage in the evening so that I don’t even have to go back to the property at all. I have most of the furniture and art from The Manor sent to my parents’ vault in Gringotts for them to deal with later, allowing Stan to pick and choose a few pieces as donations to the library. I want nothing to do with any of it; I said my goodbyes a long time ago.

 

Although it feels surreal to be finished with the entire process in under a day, I feel good about this decision, and I feel good about trusting the person that brought me to this point in the first place.

 

I’m looking around at my few possessions, all already unpacked, and and that’s when I realize that I can’t wait until Saturday.

 

***

 

I haven’t even bothered to change into something nicer, I just excitedly twisted into the evening air as soon as I step foot on my stoop. And then I’m once again outside of The Club’s flamboyantly purple door, throwing it open and all but bouncing into the corridor that leads to the main room.

 

I nod to the bartender, who is immediately setting my drink order on a timer and tossing it over to me. I catch it with one hand and make my way to The Lounge, too excited to be over stimulated by the lights and sounds of the main room.

 

I have a seat in my aged leather chair, and I wait. To be perfectly honest, I am there a bit early, and I’ve forgotten my book, so I just keep drinking. My excited energy craves alcohol, something that I don’t normally indulge in like this. But today is a day to celebrate.

 

I’m about five or six drinks in when I realize that it’s getting late, and clearly he’s not coming. So I pick up my timer and stand, the alcohol all hitting me at once. I’m on my way out when I hear him calling my name.

 

“Malcolm,” he says loudly, and he’s running after me, shoving a black timer in his pocket. I didn’t know that they made black timers. “I thought you only came on the weekends.”

 

“I do normally,” I tell him, sipping my last drink. I’m a little more than tipsy, honestly. “But I met with Stan today.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah, I wanted to tell you about it. Can I buy you a beer? Give me your timer,” I hold my hand out for it, but he adjusts his pocket a little uncomfortably.

 

“Er—no, that’s alright, I’m not drinking tonight,” he says.

 

“Come on, just one drink. I want to celebrate,” I slur. He catches my arm as I stumble, and leads me back to where I was just sitting.

 

He sighs, pursing his lips. “Fine, yeah, give me your timer and I’ll be right back.”

 

For some reason this makes sense to me, so I wait patiently, trying not to sway in my seat, and he returns with drinks.

 

“Vodka tonics,” he announces, setting one in front of me. Not my style, but I’m grateful and suddenly very thirsty, so I chug mine heartily. It goes down easy, and I feel a little more refreshed.

 

“So I met with Stan—he gave me a great offer on my house, we’re turning it into a public library!” I burst out enthusiastically. “And we’ll keep the existing gardens, set aside a few rooms for social engagements, it’s going to be spectacular.”

 

“That’s amazing, I’m glad Stan could work something out for you. He’s a good bloke,” he says, sipping his drink quietly through a straw. I didn’t know anyone drank vodka tonics through a straw.

 

“He really is. He’s a really good bloke. And guess what else? I found a house today. I bought it! It’s mine. The first thing I’ve ever owned that was only mine, isn’t that great?”

 

“Yeah, wow Malcolm, that’s fantastic.”

 

And so I tell him about it—how the shutters are dark oak and the house itself is a light blue. I tell him about the river it’s on, how there’s a willow tree in the front yard—I’ve always loved willow trees—two bedrooms… wait no, three bedrooms, plus a study, and an enormous kitchen that I don’t know what to do with…

 

“Malcolm?” he calls from far away. I don’t respond at first, until he places his hand on mine, and he pulls me back. My hand twitches, automatically wanting to lace my fingers through his.

 

“Sorry, ’s been a long day, I don’t think I’ve eaten…” I mutter.

 

His face twists up a little bit, and demands that I stay here. I sit patiently, waiting for ages for him to come back, and I’m trying not to lean over too much or jerk my head around every time something startles me. It’s taking all of my focus not to completely zone out.

 

When he returns he helps me up, looping my arm around his neck. He’s still shorter than I am, and this makes me laugh.

 

“Where are we going?” I ask.

 

“Not far, trust me.”

 

He helps me up two flights of stairs, I’m still giggling, and then we’re in a bedroom—I wonder vaguely if we’re going to make love, and then I realize that I’m much too tired and that’s terribly disappointing. There’s a bed and some other furniture, and he takes my shoes away and tucks me into bed.

 

As he’s adjusting my pillow, I grab his hand and hold it against my face. It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever felt.

 

“... Harry,” I whisper. And then everything goes black.

 

***

 

I wake up with an absolutely throbbing headache, and I’m very, very confused. I’m starving, but the thought of food makes me want to retch, which I already want to do anyway. I gingerly pry myself from the random bed I’ve found myself in, and I wander to the first door I see, praying it’s a toilet.

 

It is definitely a toilet, but I don’t make it to the actual toilet and instead I’m retching into the sink, losing all of the stray alcohol that lingered in my gut. Everything still hurts, but I’m at least no longer ready to immediately be sick. I rinse out the sink, then my mouth, and I comb through the cabinets in the bathroom, annoyed when I don’t find an hangover potion and then relieved when I finally do.

 

I suck it down like it’s the nectar of life, pray that I don’t throw it up before it has a chance to work, and shuffle back to the bed.

 

That’s when I notice that there’s another person in the room, and he’s on the other side of the bed. Shirtless and tangled in the sheets. He looks as though he was facing toward me where I slept, curling in, but then he stirs and rolls over onto his back. And that scar is no less tempting when its owner is asleep than when he’s awake.

 

My attention is drawn to it and I’m climbing back into bed, every muscle in my body strained against wanting to touch the puckered, irregular skin again now that I know what it wants me to do. I realize not for the first time now extraordinarily beautiful he is, and I’m fighting a losing battle.

 

Thankfully when I get back into bed he stirs, and eventually he notices me sitting erect, every muscle in my body locked into place.

 

“Hey—you’re awake,” he mumbles when he pushes himself upright, exposing even more of himself. I start to sweat.

 

He looks confused for a moment, wondering why I’m not responding and probably also why I have the blankets clutched over my hips and upper thighs, then his eyes widen and he hikes the sheet up to his neck, taking it with him when he wanders over to the small table in the corner. He retrieves his shirt and shoves himself into it, and then his jeans. I’m unable to look away and I can’t miss the fact that now I know-- the scar falls down to just above his knee.

 

“Sorry—I’m used to waking alone,” he says honestly, once he’s fully clothed.

 

Relief floods through me. The potion is starting to kick in and I’m feeling the sweet relief in my head, then my entire body. Only a slight bit of nausea remains, but I’ll be right as rain in a few more minutes.

 

“What the hell? How much did I drink last night?” I grunt. I’m not wearing a whole lot of clothing, I’m confused, I can recall nothing, and that scar could have brought about a lot of different outcomes which I wouldn’t remember—not that I would be protesting all that much. I brace myself against the impact.

 

“You had like seven drinks—well, actually, the last one I lied about. You thought it was a vodka tonic, but I just gave you water… and nothing happened, I swear. You passed out as soon as you hit the bed—you must have thrown off your clothes in your sleep.”

 

Damn.

 

“Where are we? And why the hell are you here?”

 

He sort of looks guilty, and after his honest explanation I can’t understand why. “We’re one of the rooms above the lounge that the owner is working on.”

 

“But… what? Just—what?”

 

“The rooms—they’re new. They’re for members who want a private place still on Club property after hours. And I’m here because I didn’t think I could apparate with you like that and I didn’t want to leave you to choke in your sleep, honestly.”

 

“... In the bed?” I whisper. I’m more appalled at the possibilities than anything.

 

“Do you notice an alternative option?”

 

I look around, and there really is just the bed and the small table in the corner. He did say the rooms are new.

 

“You said they’re being worked on?”

 

“Yeah, a few rooms are open for a test run, to see how functional it is for members as a transition from The Club to private rooms when they just want a hookup.”

 

Even though I’m no longer hungover—or drunk, for that matter—I’m still groggy from waking up, and I want answers, so I keep drilling him, trying to make sense of things.

 

“So how do you get a room?” I grit.

 

“Well, right now they’re reservation only until the rest open up—there are quite a few, four floors of rooms...”

 

“Oh.”

 

It hits me like a ton of bricks, and I can almost feel the blood drain from my face from equal parts embarrassment and hurt. I came to tell him my good news, and ended the night in a room that he clearly reserved. He was hoping to end up here with someone. He literally came here on Monday night, with a room reserved to take another guest back to. On a night when I don’t normally make an appearance at The Club.

 

That someone was not meant to be me, and other things were meant to have happened here.

 

I’m vaguely remembering that he was walking away from a pretty irritated looking bloke when he called after me last night…

 

“Oh.” I say again.

 

He bites his lip awkwardly. “I’ll just—I’ll be right back—toilet…” he mutters.

 

I don’t even know what to do now other than to start gathering up my clothes and putting them on. By the time he’s back in the bedroom, I’m gone.

 

I sneak out of the building quietly, passing the front bar on my way out. Angelo is there, wiping out glasses, and I wonder vaguely if he ever sleeps. I toss him the black timer that was on the table as I was leaving the room upstairs.

 

“Good night?” he raises his eyebrows.

 

“Not quite. Can I put the room that was booked to that timer on my tab?”

 

“Er—sure, I don’t see why not.”

 

So Angelo has confirmed my theory about the black timers—they’re for people with reserved rooms. They’re so others at The Club know what you’re there for that night.

 

“You know check out time isn’t until 11am, right?” he tells me. I glance at the clock behind him. It’s only 8:15am.

 

“I do now.”

 

***

 

It takes me all week to adjust to living in my new home, and instead of taking on new clients, I start working on the house. A few of the rooms need new paint, the floors need polishing, and to be perfectly honest I don’t have a whole lot to fill the space with. I’ve got some of the cash leftover from the sale of The Manor that I didn’t spend on this house, so I spend the rest of the time perusing through catalogues and visiting the shops. I work on collecting things like cookware and furniture to fill my study and at least one of the extra bedrooms as a guest room.

 

Part of me tells myself that I’m avoiding my problems. But another part of me tells that part to shove off, that I don’t have problems and I’m not avoiding anything. And yet another part of me is sort of totally acknowledging the problem and trying to make plans to fix it.

 

But the bottom line is that he was there on Monday to hook up. Which bothered me more than I ever thought it could. And it makes absolutely no sense for me to be bothered by this fact. I never made my feelings known, and I never had any inclination of his—although he’s made them pretty clear now.

 

I try to tell all of the parts to shut up, but at least two of them jabber on throughout my day at all times against my will, which is why when the house has been fixed up room by room, I’m left alone with my thoughts and they begin to slowly drive me insane. So I owl The Club. And Angelo owls back. And then I owl back again. And then wouldn’t you know it, I’ve got a room reserved at The Club for Tuesday night. I completely bypass my usual Saturday attendance and skip forward to the next week, and when I attend that Tuesday I proudly display my black timer, wanting nothing more than a release and something to take my mind off of things.

 

So I do.

 

Someone approaches me before I even have a chance to sit down.

 

“You have a reservation?” he asks, nodding at my timer.

 

I say yes, slam my drink, order another, slam that one when it shows up in my glass, and follow him upstairs. I worry vaguely that I’m developing a drinking problem, and then decide I don’t care.

 

Late that evening I dress robotically, adequately satisfied, but annoyingly the hurt is still there. I make my way out of The Club, leaving my random bedmate to wake and saunter out on his own either tonight or tomorrow morning.

 

Angelo winks at me as I’m leaving, The Club mostly empty as it’s shutting down for the night—I expected to be there a little longer, honestly, but my heart just isn’t in it. I toss him my timer. “Charge him if he’s not out by morning, yeah?”

 

“Malcolm,” I hear a familiar voice shout after me. I ignore it, waiting for Angelo’s response.

 

“You got it, boss,” Angelo assures me, and then I’m walking out into the brisk, cold air.

 

“Malcolm!” I hear my name again from behind me. I was hoping to get out of there quickly enough to apparate away, but my apparation anxiety always forces me to take a few extra moments, and now my stupid fear has really screwed me.

 

“Would you wait?” he said, grabbing the elbow of my sleeve.

 

I spin around with a snap, fully aware that I am completely disheveled. Good. Let him see. “What?”

 

“I—I wanted to talk to you.”

 

“We’re outside of The Club, that’s not my name, and you’re not supposed to talk about anything that happens in there,” I spit at him, trying to cover up the fact that I’m hurting as badly as I am.

 

“Shit, fine, Dra—”

 

I cut him off. “I never gave you my permission to call me that.”

 

“Just—come back inside for a moment so we can talk.”

 

I purse my lips, now frustrated and spent and just wanting to leave, but instead I turn, walk past him, and fling open that damn purple door. I tuck myself into one of the narrow, private hallways that lead nowhere that no one knows about. But apparently he knows, and he follows me into the darkness.

 

“What is it? I want to go home,” I spit at him.

 

“Yeah, I’m sure you do. I saw the timer you tossed to Angelo. Have a nice evening?” he glares at me.

 

“Mm, I almost forgot how familiar you are with them. Silly me.”

 

I can’t see his face very well but I can tell that tonight he’s wearing his glasses, and I can feel the heat off of him. He’s pissed off, but that’s okay because so am I.

 

“You know what, maybe this was a stupid idea. I only came tonight to see if you were here, to talk to you, but I can see now that was a mistake.”

 

“Clearly.” My cold, icy manner has crept into the space between us, and it scares me how much I sound like my father but I’m too mad to care—then he takes me by surprise.

 

“Clearly,” he repeats. And then suddenly he’s shoved me up against the wall and we’re kissing. It’s hot, it’s passionate, and with as much as we’re both pissed off it feels like there’s fire between us—like the places where our bodies touch are buzzing with electricity. It doesn’t take much and we’re both hard, rubbing up against each other. I’m gasping, and a moan escapes my mouth.

 

I push back, returning the favor by pinning him against the opposite wall and running both of my hands from his hips and up his torso. I may as well be leaving a trail of sparks behind. He’s sucking my lip into his mouth, and this is so, so much more intense than what I just went through with the bloke whose name I never even got, but who I’m cursing anyway because I have a room but it’s taken and if I had just waited I could have taken him…

 

Then out of nowhere, as I’m leaning down and taking the soft flesh of his neck between my teeth, sucking probably a little more harshly than I should, he shoves me off of him. “I wasn’t going to stay,” he says after a moment, his voice gravelly, some emotion that I can’t pin down slipping into his words. Then he storms out.

 

And I’m left alone, confused, in a hallway with a hardon, and even more pissed off than I was five minutes ago.

 

***

 

The worst thing about being a part of The Club is something I’ve struggled with in the recent past: not being able to talk about what has happened there with anyone else. I’ve worked through too many problems in my own head, but in recent years I’ve learned to open up with people, to work through issues with another person. Now that I can’t, I feel stuck.

 

I consider myself a smart man, but it takes me weeks to work through what he meant when he said he wasn’t going to stay, and in that time I haven’t returned to The Club. Instead I focus on other things, one of which being my ever-present anger at him.

 

I let the lease go on my storefront, and instead take out ads in the papers, forcing customers to owl me privately to discuss business so that I can go to them when I’m ready. It works out better than it has in the past, since before I was forced to set specific hours for house calls so that I could be in the shop doing repairs, waiting for clientele to stop in.

 

Now I work from home and I set up shop in the little outbuilding that came with the property. I fix it up a bit, build up a work area in the loft and a few rows of storage shelves on the ground floor. I’m finally able to put in the safes I always wanted but could never install in my store—the landlord didn’t want me to scratch up the floors, as though we weren’t wizards.

 

I throw myself into my work, as my business is really picking up the pace now that people don’t feel quite so awkward walking into a storefront for everyone to know what they’re up to. Clients feel comfortable contacting me from the privacy of their own homes. I continue to report to The Ministry officials that I work under, who honestly put a little more trust in me than I ever expected them to. They hardly ever check in with me or do inspections, and simply have faith that I’m being honest. I am, of course, but it just surprises me, especially because of my history. I suppose they don’t have much choice, seeing how I’m literally the only person who would willingly do my job due to its deception.

 

Every once in awhile I try to make plans with friends, but normally they’re busy so I’m just left alone in my new house. I don’t mind it so much. It’s quiet. But that bites me in the arse most nights.

 

The construction on Malfoy Manor ends and I get invited to the grand opening—I turn it down. I doubt I’ll ever set foot in there again, regardless of what it looks like, although I’m told it’s a great success. Stan owls me to tell me it’s the most lucrative project he’s ever taken on, and that it has the most foot traffic of any of the properties he manages for the Revite Project. I’m proud that it’s worked out so well, and overall just pleased that I got something out of it. I wish I had the chance to thank the person who gave me the opportunity, but he’s an idiot and I hate him.

 

Of course he wasn’t going to stay; neither was I. We were both leaving. _He’s_ the one who stopped _me. He’s_ the one who pressured _me_ into going back in The Club. _He’s_ the one who pushed _me_ up against the wall…

 

I still don’t get it.

 

Eventually Blaise makes time for his old friend, bless him, and I meet him and Luna at a French restaurant in town. We have a nice enough time, but I always feel like the third wheel even though that’s not the case. If anything, Luna is the third wheel—she makes herself one by only randomly inserting herself into a conversation here and there, lost in thought other times. Dinner is good, and at the end Blaise excuses himself to pay the bill—his treat.

 

“So, how are things Luna?” I ask her.

 

She takes a moment to come back to me and respond. “Very good, Draco, thank you for asking. Have you seen Harry lately?” Merlin, she wastes no time.

 

I can feel my eyes widen and my heart skip a beat, and suddenly I’m back in a plush bed being tucked in my a dark haired angel, whispering that name as I drift off to sleep…

 

“Luna, you know The Rules,” I remind her. I don’t know how she knew that he and I were talking as often as we were at The Club—possibly she’s been checking over the Guest Book—but she certainly can’t mention it here. And anyway, I’d sort of forgotten that the two of them were friends, although now it makes sense how he knows so many ins and outs of The Club, like dark, hidden passageways…

 

“Of course I do, Draco, I do own half of The Club. I’m not talking about anything that’s happened there—I saw you and him talking outside a few weeks ago.”

 

I have no idea how she saw us, and how she could possibly have taken that as a situation in which he and I would want see each other again since we were arguing. Regardless, I’m a little—or a lot—caught off guard.

 

“No, Luna, I haven’t seen him since that night. We’re not exactly on good terms.”

 

“Oh. I thought he left the second time with a love bite and I figured the two of you had settled your vendetta. No matter, I just haven’t spoken with him in a while and was wondering if you had.”

 

I’m still feeling a little awkward and I would really rather change the subject, but now I’m interested. “Hasn’t he been going to The Club?”

 

“Well, I certainly couldn’t tell you that, could I?” she says dreamily.

 

“No, I guess not. Have his friends seen him? How long has it been?”

 

“No, they haven’t seen him either. He said he was going off the grid, but I didn’t think it would be more than a few days. It’s been over a week.” She doesn’t seem at all concerned, and for some reason that’s making me panic.

 

“Luna, where is the last place you saw him?” I press.

 

“I can’t tell you.”

 

“Damn it,” I curse, frustrated at what she isn’t telling me and the reason why she can’t.

 

“You know, I find it quite fun to talk in hypotheticals. Do you want to try it?”

 

“What?” She’s gone off on a tangent again, and here I am stressing about my missing… person. My person who’s missing.

 

“I’ll start. Hypothetically, if I were to say that the last time I saw a very good friend of mine leaving a place you and I are both familiar with, I might say that they were leaving with someone who looked quite strange and drew a lot of attention.”

 

And then it dawns on me, once again, that Luna isn’t crazy. And I could kiss her. I follow her lead.

 

“That’s interesting, Luna. Hypothetically, if I were to ask you what the person your friend left with looked like, what might you say?”

 

“Hm. I might say, hypothetically, that the person was extraordinarily beautiful—unnaturally so.”

 

“Extraordinarily beautiful?”

 

“Hypothetically,” she repeats, and I can’t believe she’s figured out a way to talk about things that happen at The Club without breaking The Rules. I’m pondering her comment about the extraordinary beauty when she interrupts my deep thoughts. “Here comes Blaise. You know Draco, I taught Harry how fun it is to talk in hypotheticals too. And hypothetically, I think he really fancied someone. Which might be why, hypothetically, the only time he ever made plans to stay someplace in advance, he couldn’t follow through and was planning on leaving—until that someone showed up a little too drunk.”

 

“All right, Draco? We’re headed home now,” Blaise tells me, slapping me on the shoulder, and I barely hear him. “See you ‘round, mate.”

 

Luna waves calmly at me, with a quick, “Bye Draco,” and they head off.

 

I’ve finally got an answer to my riddle. And a new one to solve before I can make things right.

 

***

 

Where the hell has he been? It’s still so strange to think of him as his given name, his real name, that I don’t think of one at all. But now he’s on my mind constantly, even more than before.

 

I work back through every conversation we’ve ever had, searching for a clue. Is he on vacation? Staying with an unfamiliar friend? Training for a new job? Exploring the wilderness?

 

When I decide that I can’t leave it alone and I’m useless in every part of my life while I’m just stuck here wondering, I start with Stan. I take the day off and set out to the address that I went to before.

 

Stan looks exactly the same when he answers the door; if anything he’s shrunk a little, and maybe his hair is a little more ginger.

 

“Yeah?” he grumbles at me.

 

“The guy who gave me that card, have you see him?”

 

“Who’s askin’?”

 

“Me, Stan. It’s me. I am clearly the one asking.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a bunch. You can never be too careful. But anyway, I ain’t seen ‘im.”

 

“Since when?” I’m anxiously rubbing my thumb in the palm of my other hand.

 

“Eh, since about a week ago. He stopped in to drop off some more gold.”

 

“... Gold?”

 

“Yeah, don’t you know anything? He funds the Revite Project.”

 

Merlin’s beard, I apparently _don’t_ know anything about the man I was feverishly kissing a few weeks ago. And just a week before that, I’d shared a bed with him. He bought my house. What the hell else don’t I know?

 

“Yes course I know that, never mind the gold. What day did you see him?”

 

“Sunday morning, I think. Yeah, he was dressed up in his investigative clothes, I thought that was weird for a Sunday. Who doesn’t take Sunday off?”

 

I ignore that last remark, because I know exactly who would work on a Sunday, and I’m asking about him. “Describe his clothes for me.”

 

“Eh, his normal clothes but with a hooded trench coat. Dark. Oh, and black boots, instead of his regular sneakers—”

 

“Thanks Stan, you’ve been great but I really have to go,” I cut him off, backing away. I don’t have time for stories right now, and I feel like that’s where he’s headed.

 

As I’m walking away, I hear Stan mumble something about me being ungrateful, and I continue on.  


The only place I can think of to go is back home to ponder, so that’s what I do. Something keeps nagging me in the back of my mind, and I’m annoyed beyond belief that I can’t figure out what it is. He mentioned something to me in the past about freelancing, and that must have been what he was doing. But what was he working on?

 

After about an hour of frustrated back and forth thinking, I realize I’m not getting anywhere. I wish I only had a pensieve…

 

My heart drops.

 

I do have a pensieve. And I bloody donated it to The Manor Library.

 

***

 

The library, so named Mercy Library, looks exactly like the blueprints that Stan drew up, and I’m so beyond impressed that I forget my anxiety about returning and I’m almost frozen in awe for a moment. But I proceed through the doors, going directly for the map of the building; No where on the map does it say where they’ve put the pensieve.

 

“Can I help you?” an older woman asks me. I breathe a sigh of relief that the gods have provided me with a librarian.

 

“Yes, hi, I’m looking for an artifact that was donated here. It’s a large, white, marble pensieve…”

 

“Oh, you’re Mr. Malfoy, no wonder you look so familiar! Your family’s portrait hangs in the Great Room—but what you’re looking for is in the Astronomy Tower. The space helps to clear the mind,” she says helpfully, and gestures to a staircase at the end of the hall behind her. “Thoughts take focus to examine. I’ll make sure no one interrupts you, Mr. Malfoy,” she smiles.

 

I thank her again and run to the Astronomy tower where our old family pensieve stands and immediately start emptying thought after thought of him from recent weeks.

 

I pull up specific conversations, trying to remember exactly when each occurred, spending several hours with my back hunched over and my face in a bowl full of mist.

 

It’s no wonder I’ve fallen for him like I have in such a short amount of time, which I’m recognizing now in my search for information. Every memory of him is so clear—he’s not the awkward, cocky teenager that I used to know. He’s strong, and sure, and settled in a way that I never thought he could be.

 

I see him smile, see him laugh, and see him brush the other side of my face with his spare hand as I’m holding the other to my cheek—something I hadn’t remembered until now. I see him curling into me as we sleep, my drunken restlessness picking up bits and pieces of him reaching out for me in the night, and of me reaching back…

 

I see his passion for the truth… I hear him tell me about his family, and his work, and about Matty…

 

I see how overwhelmed I become by his extraordinary beauty that first night when he reveals his scar to me…

 

And then everything clicks. His partner. The scar. The extraordinary beauty. The things that Luna said to me the night we had dinner…

 

Eventually from that mist I rise, and I understand.

 

He’s gone after the Veela.

 

The thought that had been nagging at me was the one about how Luna had thought we had settled our vendetta—but it wasn’t our vendetta that I was trying to remember. She mentioned him leaving The Club with an extraordinarily beautiful man… and how I thought the very same thing about him the first time he raised his shirt and showed me that damn scar. It was all connecting now.

 

And after all, who wouldn’t have a vendetta against the stray monster that attacked him and caused the recent death of his partner?

 

I painstakingly throw all of my thoughts back into my head one by one and eventually fly down the stairs—the entire library is empty, and I’m grateful for the peace. Come to think of it, it’s probably after hours, but the librarian—who I learn is called Mrs. Fletcher—certainly doesn’t seem to mind staying late considering that she becomes a great help in finding recent issues of _The Prophet_.

 

Eventually she and I find the article on the death of his partner and discover that the Veela nest was actually local, much closer than I would have thought—it was nestled in a forested area next to a muggle community. At the time, it was thought to be abandoned, but I wonder if he thought otherwise.

 

So I shoot an owl off to Luna in case I end up dead because of this venture, thank Mrs. Fletcher, and then I’m off on the hunt.

 

***

 

It truly doesn’t take very long to get to the outskirts of the forest, and it’s getting quite late. I’m second guessing myself at every step, wishing that I hadn’t come when it was dark out and wishing I had backup. But I keep on, and eventually I find the house. It’s creepy, and I can feel the horrible things that have happened here. Both the humans and the Veelas suffered tragedies in this place, and it’s just got this tension that feels… like a battleground. It’s a familiar feeling.

 

I cast every concealment spell I know on myself and quietly search the area, finding several places where there’s really strange trace of magic—like a trap that was set, and then walked straight into.

 

He must have been waiting for the Veela to return. It’s no wonder it took him this long after his partner’s death to go after it. It’s quite smart actually—he was waiting for it to return. But apparently it turned his cunning plan around on him.

 

I crouch behind a rather large oak tree, staking out the place to see what my best plan of action is. I can see a few lanterns burning in one of the upper rooms; occasionally there’s a shadow that passes through the light, but it’s so dark and I’ll admit that I’m afraid. If the Veela catches me off guard too, we’re both in trouble.

 

I’m out there for a couple of hours, trying to work up the nerve to just walk up there, ready to fight, when I hear the leaves behind me rustle a bit.

 

And then I almost piss my pants when someone lightly taps me on the shoulder, and I try not to scream.

 

“SHIT, STAN!” I hiss as quietly as I can muster. The tiny little man is standing next to me, not even needing to bend his knees in order to still be shorter than my current height.

 

“Calm your nerves, scaredy cat, it’s just me. Luna sent me.”

 

“Luna? Merlin, do you all know each other?” My heart is beating too fast and I’m still trying to catch my breath.

 

“What? No, Luna’s the one who found me and hooked me up with Potter for a job.”

 

“Found you?” I continue to gasp for air.

 

“That’s a story for a different time. What have you found?”

 

“Not a whole lot yet. Some lanterns, a shadow.”

 

“Hm,” he says. Then he disappears—literally just pops out of the air for a few moments and then pops back, just before I start hissing his name.

 

“Okay, I’m gonna hold your hand, and you’re gonna freak out for a second, but you’ve just gotta trust me. Potter’s in there, and the thing is asleep. You came at a good time—now’s our chance.”

 

“What? You mean the Veela?” I say, but he’s already taken my hand, and when I look down I can’t see him. Or my own feet. We’re bloody invisible.

 

“Damn it, Stan,” I mutter, trying not to freak out like he said I would but I’m really, really tempted to. “What are you?”

 

I can almost feel him grin his stupid crooked grin. “Later—come on,” he says, and we’re walking together hand-in-hand, wands out—at least I assume he has his wand out, since I can see absolutely no bit of him—towards the house.

 

When we get to the door, we find that it’s already been busted in—which is honestly a relief simply due to the noise factor, but it doesn’t do anything for my worry. I take the liberty of quietly casting a few silencing spells on the floor boards so they won’t squeak.

 

I’m wondering what the limitations of Stan’s invisibility is, trying to use it to our advantage—do we still cast shadows? If I pick up a foreign object will it also become invisible?—when he starts dragging me up a narrow little staircase toward the flickering lights.

 

When we get to the top, I can see we’re in a little loft sort of room—the entire house looks to be made of wood, a converted barn probably, judging by the stray piles of hay—and I’m thinking that when we’re done with this whole thing we should probably take a match to it. Then, low and behold, there he is: all tied up and hanging from a large meat hook by his wrists, completely unconscious. In the corner, propped up on a scratchy looking hay bale, is his Veela captor—although not inexplicably beautiful as described.

 

Terrifying, bird-like, and feathered, it quietly snores a quite shrill little snore—apparently Veela powers sleep when they do, and reveal them for their true nature.

 

Suddenly Stan lets go of my hand, and I freeze in place. We’re both visible again, and if that Veela wakes up we’re all dead. But Stan’s got a plan, and he motions to me to take care of the sleeping wizard while he goes for the Veela. I’m afraid that waking him up will wake up the monster too, so I grit my teeth and throw a full body-bind curse at him. Then I levitate his body high enough off of the hook to release him, and I’m getting ready to take hold of his hands when there’s a hissing noise from the corner— _that_ corner.

 

“RUN!” Stan shouts, and despite any previous anxiety, I’ve tackled the floating body and we’re apparating the hell out of there to the first place I can think of.

 

The first place I could think of, apparently, was Stan’s house, and we land on the stoop. He looks all in tact and still just as body-bound as before, so I pull him inside and set him on the couch. I’m so scared shitless that I can’t stop shaking, and even though I want to go back after Stan I know that I would probably kill myself trying to apparate there in my current state, and I have to trust that Stan knows what he’s doing.

 

Without warning, I start to cry from all of the adrenaline. I don’t want to wake him up yet, so I sit there next to him and I take turns between stroking his face and healing the bits of him that I can while my tears fall on his jacket.

 

I don’t know what to do, and I start to get worried after about twenty minutes of waiting for Stan to reappear. I don’t want to leave him here by himself, but I don’t want to wake him up and have him see me like this, knowing that I’ve left Stan behind, knowing that he would go after Stan when he probably needs medical attention…

 

“I’m sorry,” I whisper at him. “I should have told you how I felt, and instead I’ve ruined everything. I didn’t know…”

 

That’s when I Stan barging through the front door. “Draco, you here kid? That thing was one nasty piece of work. Sorry it took so long—I dropped it off at to Luna so she could take it in to The Ministry for us—they don’t like me there…”

 

And then he finally makes his way into the living room, lighting lanterns as he goes. He finally catches sight of me, and I’m a mess.  

 

He takes pity on me. “Go on home, kid. I can take it from here. You done enough.”

 

So I let him take over, and I escape back into the cover of night.

 

***

 

**Amendment No. 2:**

**Anonymity is not strictly enforced within the confines of The Club’s private rooms, which are to considered to be a “safe zone” in which guests can, if they so choose, reveal their true identities and discuss previously prohibited Club affairs.**

 

Luna has been sending me little notes, updating me on how he’s doing. He’s recovered just fine. I can’t say the same for me.

 

I throw myself back into work, again taking on more than my usual load to try to distract myself. More often than not, I end up distracted from the job instead and it just ends up painful on my end—some horrible book will try to take my hand off or a creepy tea pot will brew poison and serve it to me.

 

Honestly, I’m more of a mess than I was before I went after him.

 

One rainy Saturday morning a few weeks later, I’m busy fixing myself some tea when there’s a knock at the door. Not a soul knows where I live except for Stan, so I expect it to be him. It isn’t.

 

“Hi,” he says.

 

Not at all expecting him, I’m quite shocked. “Hey,” I say skeptically.

 

“Will you invite me in?” he asks. His messy black hair is all over the place, matted in spots from the rain. He looks incredble.

 

I move out of the way of the door for him to enter the house, and close it politely behind him. I have no idea what to expect from this visit, except I do expect him to at least take off his coat and shoes. Instead he just stands in my doorway, sopping wet, as I walk past him and attempt to lead him into my home like any decent host. He stays where he is.

 

“Would you like tea?” I ask.

 

“No, I can’t stay. Or, well, I shouldn’t. Anyway… Hypothetically, if I had some things that I might like to say to someone but couldn’t say them outside of a certain facility without having a very long hypothetical conversation, I would probably stop by their home and invite them to join me at that place in the future.” He waits for my response.

 

I purse my lips and nod slowly, familiar with Luna’s game. “Hypothetically, I could understand why a person would do that.”

 

“Good, that’s good,” he says. “Well then, I might hypothetically be at that place tonight around six, if anyone would like to join me.” And then he turns and leaves.

 

At 5:55pm I’m outside of The bloody Club again, and I’m an anxious combination of nervous and tired. I want this to be over already, so once again I wrench open the purple door and snatch up a timer. I let Angelo fiddle with it and then serve me my regular drink while I wait—I kill it in one shot for courage, and let him refill it there while he tells me about some of the new changes that The Club has introduced. And then I go to The Lounge, where I know he’ll be.

 

He’s there waiting in his chair, and I take a seat in mine.

 

“Malcolm,” he greets me.

 

“James,” I reply.

 

He gets right to the point. “Have you heard of The Club’s newest amendment to The Rules?”

 

I nod slowly. “Angelo may have mentioned it when I came in.”

 

He pulls out a black timer, and my heart skips a beat. He may not have reserved a room for _that_ reason, but I still can’t help my carnal reflex, especially after the last time we were here together—all limbs and heavy breathing.

 

“Will you come chat with me in one of the rooms upstairs?”

 

I down my second drink while staring at him, and then stand, gesturing after him. And so this time, more or less sober, I follow him up the stairs without his help, and we enter a different room than we did before. This one is more of a smaller lounge than anything, with a sofa and a couple of chairs and quietly burning fireplace. He shuts the door behind me and takes a seat on the sofa—I in the chair closest to him.

 

He sets his timer on the coffee table—my heart thumps a little harder than usual—and I take a good swig of my manhattan, which I had refilled on the way up.

 

“Luna tells me you are responsible for my rescue.”

 

I don’t respond, instead chewing on my lip, waiting for him to continue. He does.

 

“When I ask Stan, he refuses to give anything up. But I can’t imagine how he, even with his particular brand of magic, could get two entire bodies back to his house alone.”

 

I interrupt him here, having planned on staying mostly quiet but completely unable to pass up this rare opportunity. “Yeah, about that—what _is_ Stan? Did you know he can go invisible? What the hell is that about?”

 

He chuckles, the firelight flickering against his glasses, and he knows that he’s said the right thing to break the ice. Very smooth, I have to admit.

 

“He’s half-leprechaun.”

 

“I _knew_ it,” I mutter, although leprechaun wasn’t even on my list of considerations.

 

He purses his lips amusedly, and then I hit him with the thing that’s been bothering me, trying to change the subject.

 

“You bought my house. And my other house. You… bought one from me and for me.”

 

He crinkles his eyebrows, and I can tell he’s a little uncomfortable. “Stan wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

 

“Don’t you think I had a right to know?” I’m only a little bit mad—I’m more confused than anything else.

 

“I just wanted you to have a good living situation. I did for you what I’ve done for countless others in the same boat. In fact, it wasn’t even all me. There are private donors, as well. And the Ministry sets aside some of the restitution that they get from war criminals for the Revite Project.”

 

I don’t have anything to say to that. Malfoys don’t accept charity.

 

“Consider it pre-payment for you saving my life, it that helps.”

 

I consider this, and then nod. It does help.

  
We’re both quiet for several moments, uncomfortable with taking the conversation in the direction it has to go next.

 

“You reserved a room,” he eventually confronts me with.

 

“You reserved one first.”

 

“I ended up not wanting to stay. I did end up with the person I wanted to be with that night… But not in the way I wanted to. He was drunk, you see, and I hadn’t realized… The reason I even reserved the room to begin with was because I thought he wasn’t interested, and I thought that it might help me try to get over it,” he trails off. We both stay silent for a moment, as people often do after they relive their pain.

 

“I had no way of knowing that,” I whisper. “I thought you wore your heart on your sleeve—you’re like an open book, and it didn’t seem like…”

 

“I know.”

 

“And you did initially set out to use that room.”

 

“That’s true. I did, but I couldn’t. I was about five minutes away from going home when you showed up.”

 

Even though I had gathered that much, it feels good to have him say it. But now we’re heading toward the territory that I don’t want to enter. I can feel my eyes drifting toward the floor, inspecting the dimly lit rug. I probably look like a very sad puppy.

 

He’s not having it.

 

“Come on, I explained myself,” he presses.

 

“ _Fine_ ,” I groan. “I was pissed off. I was also having… feelings… and I didn’t know what to do with them. I thought what happened meant that the feeling wasn’t mutual, and I lashed out. I hadn’t realized…” Shit, didn’t he just say that? “I hadn’t realized that I did what I did to try to get over it, and to try to get a rise out of you.”

 

He smiles a little sadly. “The Club seems to have its drawbacks,” he says, and I know what he means. Initially I came here so that I didn’t have to be myself, but conversation confined to one place can be really confusing.

 

“They’re making improvements,” I gesture casually.

 

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. The shadows from the irregular light remind me of the first night we sat down together, how strong his jawline was, the muscles in his arms… his allure is not lost on me now. I can feel the muscles in my jaw fled.

 

I think he can tell that I’ve been checking him out, because he then tries to casually adjust himself by crossing and uncrossing his legs, but I can tell what he’s done because I’m tempted to do the same.

 

I’m having a hard time focusing, and once he’s said something out loud I have to ask him to repeat it. He must think I’m an idiot.

 

“I asked you how you found me.”

 

I sigh, and I concede, telling him about the connection between his scar and what Luna said about the extraordinarily beautiful person he had left The Club with, and how I put the pieces together from there. I can tell he’s impressed that I went back to Mercy Library, and I’m impressed that he apparently knows me well enough to realize that would be difficult for me. But it wasn’t at the time—it wasn’t difficult at all when I weighed the the alternatives.

 

Frustratingly, it feels like all of the loose ends are tied up now, and either we keep talking now that the conversation will inevitably take an awkward turn, or we part ways. It feels like there’s too much damage to consider an alternative option.

 

He apparently chooses the latter and stands, taking his timer from the table.

 

“You’re leaving?”

 

He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, ruffling up his already permanently messy hair.

 

“Yeah, I just… If you want to stay, the room is paid for. The bedroom is just in there…” he tells me, pointing awkwardly to a door behind us that I didn’t even notice—apparently he reserved a suite. But I do notice the bulge in the front of his pants, and the growing heaviness in mine, and I know I don’t want him to leave. I haven’t wanted him to leave for weeks…

 

I do the only thing I can think of to do— I snatch his timer from his hand, and flip open the top. The countdown starts, and we’re at seven.

 

He looks at me, a confused expression on his face. But this isn’t over.

 

I hold out my hand.

 

“I’m Draco, Draco Malfoy,” I introduce myself.

 

He grins a lazy sort of grin, his eyes amused behind his glasses. He takes my hand and gives it a short shake.

 

“I’m Harry, Harry Potter.”

 

I grin shyly—here we finally are. We’ve come full circle.

 

“Nice to meet y—” he continues, but he’s cut off because I’ve taken him by the neck and I’m pulling him in, my mouth crushing against his once again, and an involuntary moan slips from his lips. The door behind us beckons.

 

No one ever said that the seven minutes had to be spent talking.

**Author's Note:**

> To those of you who have made it this far—
> 
> Thanks a million for reading. I know that the first person, present tense type of writing can often turn people off (myself included) and be difficult to read, so I truly commend you if you've made it through to the end. This is simply the way the story flowed out of me, and I hope you can appreciate why.
> 
> Until I started writing, I never realized how good it feels to have someone compliment your work. So on behalf of every fanfic writer, I wanted to say thank to you to those of you who do take the time to let the authors you love know how their work made you feel, whether it be through kudos and comments on here, likes and reblogs on Tumblr, or even PMs. You're all angels <3
> 
> Please also note that this work has been unbetaed, so if you notice any errors in spelling or consistency (especially plot holes), I would really appreciate it if you would let me know! There are only so many times that tired eyes can read over the same piece of work until words stop looking like words and errors inevitably slip past ;)


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